


excalibur

by skylights



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Great perks though, Hurt/Comfort, Kingsman is not going to win Employer of the Year awards anytime soon, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-16 15:01:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4629702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skylights/pseuds/skylights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Really, Lancelot?”</p><p>Somewhere under the bench, the hose has started to run again.</p><p>Somewhere in the building, Merlin is probably watching this trainwreck unfold in real time, Roxy throwing one last glance at the camera in the corner.</p><p><i>Really</i>, she thinks, viciously, as if Merlin can hear her, and when the cloth comes back into view, turning the world cold and wet and horrible again, the last thought that Roxy has is this:</p><p>Excalibur is, and always has been, a fucking stupid word anyways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	excalibur

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to [theartsypumpkin](http://theartsypumpkin.tumblr.com/)for being such an amazing (and amazingly patient!) artist to work with! <3 Collaborating with you on this was a genuine delight, and <333 All my love, babe! 
> 
> The art for this fic can be found on [tumblr](http://theartsypumpkin.tumblr.com/post/127307192404/kingsmanbang-team-17-roxymerlin-fanart-i), [deviantArt](http://kuroaloeart.deviantart.com/art/Kingsman-Bang-17-555406665), and also on [AO3](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4629771) itself, so please do go shower these posts with all your love and squee :3 
> 
> Last but not least, please heed the violence warnings, as this fic contains (not very graphic) descriptions of torture.

 

It is a necessity, in the end. Unavoidable and unrelenting. A procedure inescapable, even if Arthur narrows his remaining eye at it and lets his lips thin out into a hard, flat line of displeasure when the dossiers get passed around.

“Thoughts,–” he says tightly when the last file leaves Merlin’s hands, “–will only be entertained _after_ you’ve read the entire thing. Is that understood?”

In his corner, Merlin’s knuckles are showing white. Later, Roxy will wonder if Arthur had forced him to stay, or if some sick sense of misplaced guilt had rooted him there, but for now, this is all she can bring herself to care about:

The sparse, few lines under **Procedures** and **Objectives**. The tightening in her throat. The blot of ink that weighs the base of Merlin’s initials down at the bottom of the page, as if he’d rested his pen for a second too long on it before signing off.

Next to her, Eggsy draws in a sharp hiss of breath.

"So what the _fuck_ is this supposed to be, then?” he asks, eloquent as usual, and Roxy would echo his sentiments if she were so inclined to wear her emotions on her sleeve, but as it turns out, all she can do for now is just carefully shut the file in front of her.

Start to push it away too, even, before she realises what she’s doing and has to hide the misstep by looking as if she’s just straightening a crooked edge.

“This–,” Harry is saying in the meantime with measured coolness (because he _is_ Harry again, Arthur not a persona that has the patience nor the indulgence needed to endure Eggsy’s inevitable mouthing off) “–is training. Which you would have cottoned on to, if you had bothered to read till the end.”

“Read the whole thing twice now and it’s still bloody insane, innit?” Eggsy jabs at **Procedures** with a finger to make his point and Roxy has her hands flat on the table, as if there’s some sort of grounding to be found in the woodgrain under her palms. “What the _fuck_ , Harry?”

In a lesser man, the set to Harry’s jaw would have been a mark of exasperation, but on Harry, all it really does is sharpen the flint in his gaze.

“Lancelot,” he says as he turns to her instead, pointedly ignoring Eggsy who has taken to slumping in his seat, seething in quiet frustration. “Any comments or questions?”

“None, sir.”

“Concerns, then?”

“Multiple, sir, if you don’t mind me saying.”

Off to Harry’s right, Merlin is watching her in those few moments of expectant quiet, but even with time limping on, Roxy doesn’t care to elaborate. At this point, this is already part of the training too, isn’t it? A test that she can avoid failing just by inching quietly past it for now, because ignoring its existence is a sight better than conceding defeat so early on.

“Very good,” Harry says at length and Merlin is wearing that look on his face that says things are anything but. “Galahad?”

“We’re s’posed to just take it then? Lie back, think of England, that entire pile of steamin’ _shite_?”

“Contrary to whatever impression you may have received,” comes the dry response, “We would actually appreciate it greatly if _some_ effort was attempted by either of you throughout the process.”

We.

Merlin has shifted his weight exactly three times since they started this whole song and dance, one finger tapping a quiet, discomforted rhythm against the bottom of his clipboard.

_We._

He doesn’t look at Roxy, but that’s almost an answer in itself.

“Dismissed,” Harry says eventually, sounding all too calm over the sounds of Eggsy’s last-ditch dissenting, and when Roxy steps out of the room, she does it with her hands fisted tightly at her side.

Fear is a different sort of creature when you've learnt to shoot a gun and kill a man with your arm locked around his neck, but that doesn't mean it's any less difficult to recognise. There’s a cold tendril starting to snake up the column of her spine, settling in the spaces between her ribs when she breathes, and oh she knows, she _knows_ , then.

“You alright, Rox?”

“Never been better, Eggsy.”

She smiles at him, though it doesn’t quite reach her eyes, and whether she likes it or not, there’s no escaping the fact now:

For the first time in a long, long while, Roxy is afraid.

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t take long for her to start sleeping only in the barest of amounts. A handful of minutes at night if she can manage it, or the occasional, luxuriant half-an-hour stolen in the dark corners of cafes, the quiet spaces of the public library’s reading rooms. She’d stretch out between the stacks on the higher floors as well if she could, but they’re just a bit too quiet up there for her liking, a bit too lonely to be safe.

Had it been a kindness, to let them know in advance? A strange sort of practicality, perhaps, that would ease them into the process and get them used to the idea of not being in full control?

In the blurry, anxious moments before exhaustion catches her unawares, Roxy sometimes thinks of the lights of the subway train bearing down on her. Dreams about how the rope had chafed something awful at her wrists and how the rails rattling under her had shaken her to the very bone, panic rising like bile in her throat until–

She jerks awake with the bitter-sharp taste of old fear heavy in her mouth, frozen for a long moment each and every time. There are no ropes, up here. No trains either, charging towards her in some oncoming nightmare of steel and sound, but right now, does it even make a difference?

Fear is still fear after all, never mind whether it's the blind terror of death or the slow undulation of dread, gnawing at the pit of her stomach.

With the train, at least Roxy had known exactly what was coming and how it would come. Could have probably calculated its arrival down to the exact second even, if she'd been given enough time, and as ridiculous as it sounds, there's some small measure of comfort to be found in knowing the whens and hows and wheres of these things.

This time, though?

All Roxy knows is that something's coming for her.

Not when or how or even by whose hand, at that, but whatever it may be, there's no running from it, no way to hide. Every single waking moment has become an exercise in anticipation, and if Roxy thinks she could scream, somedays, from the sheer want of a moment where she doesn't have to keep looking behind her shoulder, then...well. That's just part of the training too, isn't it?

With every new hour that drags past, Roxy has to wonder:

Surely it'll be here and now, right?

Surely, _surely_ someone will have to come for her at this point?

How long more can they make this last, anyways? More importantly, how long more can _she_ last, like this?

And yet, the sun keeps rising on another uneventful night spent fighting sleep with a gun in her hand. Still, the week limps on, nothing but frustrating in how uncharacteristically banal it all is

Over the course of the next five days, Roxy sleeps barely enough to function, and even then, it;s never for more than two hours in a row.

"You look like shit," Eggsy tells her because he's fearless in more ways than one. "You even sleeping at all, Rox?"

Merlin, blessedly, says nothing whenever she stumbles into HQ looking as exhausted as she feels, and in turn, Roxy tries not to think too much about how he’d let her sleep in his office, only if she’d just swallow her pride and ask.

 

* * *

 

Of course it has to be him that brings her down, in the end. Of _course_. He’d been the one to install the security system in her flat, after all, which means that he’s the only one besides her who can get past it with little to no effort, the only one who could probably even make it this close to begin with.

Small oversights on her part, in retrospect.

She’s just started to doze off on the sofa when Leah’s sudden weight, coming down hard on her middle, jolts her awake again, her blasted traitor of a dog scrambling across the cushions to go press her nose against Merlin’s hand. Two weeks ago, she wouldn’t have been surprised to see him in her flat, absently scratching Leah behind the ears in the 4am dark, but right now?

It’s a small, irrational surge of relief that she feels first, a learned reaction that sparks through her chest before it stutters to a stop under the sudden, overwhelming swell of terror that overpowers it.

“You fucking _traitor_ ,” she hears herself say with feeling, and whether it's aimed at dog or man doesn't matter anymore when there’s suddenly not enough time left to speak, Roxy kicking up the afghan she’d been sleeping under so she can fire through it, sprinting towards the hallway after.

They’re live bullets, naturally, since anything less would be an insult to the man who trained her, but even as she rounds a corner with too much speed, shoulder throbbing from where momentum flings her against the wall, she still pauses for long enough to aim only for the chest.

He’d told her once, that their suits are always padded thickest over the heart. Mentioned in passing as well, with her legs wrapped around his waist and his hand in her hair, that sentiment has no place in the field.

In her defence, she’d barely been listening during that second one, but now that she’s crowded up against the window with no bullets left, Roxy really has to wonder if she should have paid more attention. Her last shot had been a good three centimeters wide off the tip of Merlin’s ear, and even if she can lie to herself all she wants about exhaustion playing havoc with her aim, Roxy knows, bone-deep:

She needs to check her fucking sentiment at the door, next time.

“It doesn’t happen if you can’t bring me in, right?”

Voice still hoarse with sleep, Roxy is well aware that her attempt to buy more time is just about as desperate as it is utterly useless. Merlin, damn him, must realise this too, since he has the audacity to smile in response. Granted, it does come out a little forced, but then again, it’s not like she can blame him; barely half a minute ago, she’d emptied her last five bullets into his chest.

“Technically yes,” he admits at length and it’s when he steps closer to her that Roxy notes the lack of a gun in his hand. That over-confident _bastard_. “But come off it, Lancelot. We both know that’s not going to happen tonight.”

Ten paces away. Nine. Eight. The glass is freezing where it’s pressing uncomfortably against her back and she’s far too near to break through it with any kind of ease, but she knows she can, if she wants to. Can probably even feign it so that if he does decide to rush her, the inertia might be able to carry the both of them through.

Three floors isn’t that far to fall, right?

Come on. Come on now. She’s fallen from greater heights than this, but what then?

What next?

She can’t keep running from this, she simply _can’t_. The past week has already run her ragged as it is, and the idea of doing this for another few days? Well that’s almost as daunting as the prospect of facing whatever it is that they intend to put her through, later.

Maybe it’d be better to just let it happen.

Just give in, let them–

She hears the shot a split second before she feels it, a thin whistle of air just under her ear that preludes the bite of the tranq into her neck.

_Fuck_ , she thinks wearily even as her legs start to give way and it’s no wonder now that Merlin had held no weapons, had carried no guns. _He was the fucking distraction._

Time is stretching in ways that defy understanding, Merlin moving too fast across too few seconds to catch her with what feels like a languid sort of ease. Long before she can hit the floor, his hand is a warm weight that’s braced against the small of her back, easing her down with a gentleness that could almost be called comforting, if not for the fact that she knows where he’s about to take her.

“The safe word is excalibur,” he's saying softly even as Roxy is trying to keep her thoughts straight. "Indicate now that you understand, Lancelot. You only have a few seconds left.”

Excalibur. Of all the bloody words in the entire English language.

Roxy grits her teeth and in the precious few moments that she has left to her before the sedative really kicks in, she reaches out for him. Curls her fingers into his palm and digs her nails in hard enough to nearly draw blood, because how’s _that_ for understanding?

“Acknowledged,” she thinks she hears him saying.

In the end, she's only half sure that she doesn’t hallucinate his hand closing tightly over hers.

 

* * *

 

It’s with a violence, that she comes awake. The water that they’re holding her head under is freezing and whatever that pours into her lungs during those first few moments of panic goes down burning, the automatic reflex of needing to cough her airways clear just bringing in more and more until she’s sure that she’ll end up drowning for real.

But then:

Fluorescent lights. Voices. The harsh, wet sound of her own breathing as she gasps for mouthful after mouthful of stale, blessed air.

“Do you have anything to say, Lancelot?”

They’ve hauled her away from the trough and there’s a foot between her shoulders to keep her in place, a hand keeping her head down so that her cheek is pressed painfully against the floor.

_Excalibur_ , she thinks blearily.

But no, not yet.

"Water washed your voice away, sweetheart? A little swim too much to handle?"

The hand goes away then and cold as she is now, almost shivering on the floor, the rage that’s threatening to choke her is heated enough for her voice to stay steady.

“Fuck off,” she snarls in reply. “ _Fuck right off._ ”

“Stubborn one, aren’t you?”

It would have been a lie to say that she hadn’t anticipated it coming, but the blow she earns for her mouthing back still hurts something awful, pain flaring bright and sudden across her side. Another kick comes right after, and when the boot makes contact, it hurts enough to make her yelp.

God, bruises to the ribs are the _worst_.

“Let’s try this again, shall we?”

He’s circling her now while the others stand watch. All masked, all unknown to her, but even if she did recognise any of them, Roxy knows without the shadow of a doubt that at this point, she would have snapped their ankles anyways, broken skin to draw blood if she could only break the zip ties around her wrists and feet.

"It's quite simple, really,” he says as he keeps making his rounds, keeps making her curl into herself from the pain as she tries to guess where the next kick is going to come from. “I'm going to ask you a question and what you're going to do, love, is save yourself a lot of grief by giving me a straight answer.”

She can see the steel caps on his boots when he comes to a stop in front of her.

“Do we have an understanding here?"

It takes actual effort to lift her head, but no effort at all, however, to open her mouth and spit on his laces.

"No, you bastard," she hisses and things really only go downhill from there.

 

* * *

 

It's not like Roxy can't take a beating.

Pain is actually something she's quite acquainted with, thank you very much, this mostly due to sparring sessions that only stop when blood gets drawn and actual missions where broken bones are treated as mild annoyances, not impediments.

What Roxy _can't_ take, though, is the simple knowing that there's nothing she can do. No way to fight back, to get out. Short of riling up the meatheads that they’ve dug out of the ground for this, there’s not really a long list of things she can accomplish here.

"You're a feisty little thing, aren't you?" one of them asks after she makes yet another failed attempt to lurch up towards an ankle or a foot that always seems to move away just in time. “Must be hard, to have all that anger and nowhere to let it out.”

The end of one boot nudges against the bare soles of her feet and Roxy tucks herself into an even tighter ball, teeth bared in a half-snarl as she does.

They’re _toying_ with her.

They’re toying with her and the white-hot anger that she feels at the idea is almost enough to cut through the more physical aches and pains of this whole miserable ordeal.

"Cat got your tongue, sweetheart? Sure you have nothing to say to us?”

When someone fists his hand in her hair to force her head up, it takes all of Roxy’s self control to not scream in sheer, blinding rage.

“It’d really be a pity to have to put that pretty face underwater again–,” he sighs, “–but you know what, darling? I’m afraid you’re leaving us no choice here.”

In reply, she just spits at him again, right in the eye this time. The aftermath is going to hurt like hell itself, but when that look of complete and absolute disgust flashes across his face, Roxy is sure it’ll be worth it.

Because Roxy doesn’t do things by halves, she also adds: “Don’t call me darling, you sad fuck.”

Almost immediately after he drops her back onto the ground, a fist catches her full across the face, Roxy finding no small amount of irony in how the trademark Kingsman signet ring opens up a shallow gash across one cheek.

_That better not scar_ comes the thought in a wild moment of disconnect, but as they start to drag her back towards the water, the thought dissipates. In its place, a muted terror has begun to rise, a waterlogged sense of fear that’s making her fight against every step even though logically, there’s no where else for her to go.

_It's just water,_ she thinks when they bend her over the murky depths.

_I’ve gone through this before. It can’t be that hard to do it again, right?_

A firm hand pushes her head in and oh, god, she was wrong.

She was so, so wrong.

 

* * *

 

The average person can hold their breath underwater for approximately 60 seconds.

Lesser still, if under duress.

Roxy loses track of her count somewhere in the mid 70s and it's during the empty, crawling time beyond those moments that the burning starts, the inexplicable need to scream and fight and breathe triggering that first gulp of water. Even though her throat may try to close up in protest, there’s no stopping the process once it’s started, every mouthful just adding to the pressure in her chest until Roxy’s feet are kicking and her body, thrashing.

"Still holding back on us, love?"

Each time they pull her out of the water, it’s only long enough for a word or for one gasping breath.

One word.

That’s all they need.

Roxy bites her tongue hard enough to feel warm blood fill her mouth and it's with an ironclad resolve, that she chooses the breath every single time.

 

* * *

 

When they’re done, they leave her with her clothes still soaking wet, Roxy shivering in the dark until she’s she’ll shake out of her skin. Had it only been a few hours ago, that she’d been safe and asleep? How long has it been, even, since they brought her here?

There’s a security camera affixed to one high corner and in the dark, its constant blinking is a red-lighted reminder that this is a controlled environment.That despite the wet and the cold and the ache in her lungs, Roxy isn’t actually in any real danger at all, someone constantly watching over her to make sure they don’t accidentally kill one of their own.

Whether or not this is something that makes her feel any better about being beaten and drowned within an inch of her life, Roxy doesn’t care to examine in great detail just yet. Instead, she just grits her teeth against the pain and twists herself away, somehow, only letting exhaustion overtake her once she’s managed to get her back to the light.

Let them watch, if anyone is even watching.

She won't give them anything worth looking at. After all, this is just training.

 

* * *

 

This is training:

Sleep deprivation.

Stale bread and tepid sips from a paper cup.

Cold, cold air pumped in through vents in the ceiling until Roxy is sure that she’ll never be able to remember what it feels like to be warm again.

Time lurches on almost drunkenly in here, and if it’s slow one moment, it’s falling forward in the next, the hours starting to blur into one long, nameless continuum that she couldn’t keep track of even if she’d tried.

Had it been a show, that they had expected from her? Some dramatic episode, perhaps, where she sobs herself to sleep and eventually screams for them to let her out?

Fat fucking chance, that.

As every new interrogation bleeds into another, so does every new reprieve make Roxy move even further away from the camera, some strange sort of satisfaction to found in hiding herself away like this.

_Excalibur_ , she'll mouth silently to herself in those quiet moments between each session. With her back facing the camera, they can’t see her lips move, so it’s okay. _Excalibur_ and _Excalibur_ and _Excalibur_ , until the word starts to lose its meaning and it’s just another sigh in the dark, no weight or form to the syllables.

_Excalibur_.

It should be strange that she’s finding strength in the one that that if spoken, will measure the exact extent of her weakness, but right now, every whisper is a reminder, and every sigh is a guarantee.

Excalibur means that she still has a choice in this.

Excalibur means that even if she can’t have a say over anything else, she has the final word over this, at the very least.

This is training.

This is a controlled environment.

And this can all stop, whenever she wants it to.

 

* * *

 

The picana is a device that is reported to have originated in Argentina during the 1930s. As a hybrid electroshock precursor to the Tasers of today, it had been adapted from the humble cattle prod, the simple beauty of it lying in the fact that its high voltage and low current made it less likely to kill subjects during longer sessions.

All things considered, it’s quite ingenious, really, and all Roxy can think of as they pull her up is that Merlin had probably overseen the construction of it himself. Maybe he’d even built the damn thing with his own two hands, the precision of the device seeming like something he’d appreciate.

Perhaps she should count herself lucky. Some people get flowers from their significant others, or maybe even a handmade card, if they’re creatively inclined, but for her? Absolutely none of that.

For her, only a torture device that’s been banned in almost every single civilised country will do.

"No words for us this morning, Lancelot?"

They have her suspended by the wrists this time and strung up like this, her feet are barely touching the ground, toes always just shy of finding proper purchase.

“No,” she says shortly. There’s a distinct throb of pain already starting to flare in her shoulder joints, Roxy not keen to know how it’ll feel like by the end of the hour. "So if you'd kindly get on with it, maybe we can stop wasting time with all the pointless small talk."

They must have gotten used to her mouthing back by now because they do actually get on with it after that, Roxy only flinching a little when they upend cold water all over her.

After fists and feet, cold air and hours upon hours of white noise, what’s there to fear about a little water?

Except:

_Water minimises electrical resistance_ , whispers a voice in Roxy's head.

It’s simple physics, really, and a painfully easy way to increase effect without compromising on either voltage or current. If she wasn’t going to have to experience the effects of it first hand, Roxy might have even been just a tiny bit impressed by the economy of it all.

It’s not a feeling that lasts, though. Someone fiddles with the car battery in the corner and when the bronze tip of the prod is pressed into the small of her back, there’s no headspace left for anything other than one long, shuddering scream.

 

* * *

 

One of the first things that she’d been taught at Kingsman is that torture is actually the worst possible way to gather intelligence. Clumsy, unpredictable, and hinging far too much on the unique reaction of each individual, torture simply isn’t the most effective way of getting anything out of anyone.

That, however, doesn’t mean that people won’t stop trying it all the same.

"It’ll be stupid and not to mention utterly useless, to teach you lot how to resist," Merlin had said to the remaining few who had made it to that point, and it's no surprise that it's his voice that Roxy thinks of now, the familiar lilt of his brogue remembered between each pained convulsion.

“Instead,–” he says, low and quiet in her head, “–what I _will_ teach you is how to fucking survive it."

There are ways, evidently, to trick the mind into disassociating with whatever is happening to the body. For electroshock torture, the usual recommendation is to distract yourself through noise, something about the sound of anything other than crackle of currents against skin being good enough to help pull you through.

Sing. Shout. Yell. Cry and scream and carry on a one-sided conversation, if you must. Just as long as you make enough noise, it’ll help to distract from the pain and give the mind something else to latch on to other than the next jolt, the next overload of every single nerve ending.

By the time they move on to the soles of her feet, Roxy has scraped her throat raw, and if she has to turn her voice inwards instead from that point on, at least it’s only to find that sound is no less effective when imaginary:

“You are the biggest fucking bastard I’ve had the pleasure to know,” she rages at Merlin inside her head. “The absolute _worst_.”

“Oh?” he replies, to her eternal surprise. “Have a list of reasons now, do we?”

Roxy clenches her teeth at the next touch to the back of her knees and when she bares them at the camera in the corner, there’s blood in her mouth.

“Of course I do.”

If she rations this right, there’s the distinct chance that her list of grievances will probably outlast the session.

 

* * *

 

She has to wonder, sometimes, if Merlin is watching every single moment of this. Whether he’s behind that constant red blink-blink-blink of the camera in the corner, and if he is, whether he cares about what he sees.

Had he been watching, when they had tried their best to wrench every last scream from her? Does he know what she sounds like, five seconds away from breaking and two breaths short of begging for them to stop?

But above all else, the million dollar question: would she prefer it if he _didn’t_ know?

 

* * *

 

They've drugged her beforehand for this, the world tilted and terrifying and suddenly muted when the wet cloth goes over her face.

_Please, not again,_ she barely has time to think before the water comes and oh god, she's strapped down with nowhere to go, the cold sluice of water continuing on and on and-

It stops. Restarts. Stops again only to come back with a vengeance, every moment that she can draw in half a breath from then on nothing short of a blessing.

"You know how this goes, Lancelot,” someone says over her when she's trying to sob for her next breath, and even though Roxy knows too much about the value of crying out now to feel anything like shame over the noises that she makes, the blind terror of being unable to move or see or even breathe has frozen up every last sound.

“One word,” he adds, almost kindly. “Just one word and we can all go home.”

It’s the gentleness though, that snaps her back to it, Roxy biting down hard on the inside of her mouth lest she break at the very last moment. Fear might be like a physical thing writhing in the pit of her stomach and tears, warm salt-lines of them, might be trailing down her cheeks, but she’s gotten this far and she _will_ go further, still.

“Really, Lancelot?”

Somewhere under the bench, the hose has started to run again.

Somewhere in the building, Merlin is probably watching this trainwreck unfold in real time, Roxy throwing one last glance at the camera in the corner.

_Really_ , she thinks, viciously, as if Merlin can hear her, and when the cloth comes back into view, turning the world cold and wet and horrible again, the last thought that Roxy has is this:

Excalibur is, and always has been, a fucking stupid word anyways.

 

* * *

 

It's all a bit anticlimactic, in the end. One moment Roxy can feel exhaustion creep up on her in a wave of black and the next, she's waking up in a marginally soft bed, with what seems to be a cocktail of vitamins being IV-ed directly into her bloodstream.

"Very well done indeed, Lancelot," says Harrison who eventually comes to her side, glass of water at the ready and tablet in hand. "You held on a full three days more than Galahad, believe it or not."

Roxy doesn't trust herself to speak without her voice breaking, but damn it all, she still needs to know:

"Passed, then?" she croaks hoarsely. It's barely more than a whisper and even though it's only two words, her throat still feels like she's raked her nails across it, rubbed salt into the lines to boot.

The look that Harrison gives her is one of fond exasperation.

"Really?” he asks, incredulous. “You wake up after a week in hell and that’s the first thing you want to ask me?”

" _Harrison_."

He passes her the glass, muttering something about agents all the while, and it’s only after she’s taken a sip of the soothingly warm water in it that he consents to speak again.

“Technically speaking,” he says slowly, “It wasn’t a test to begin with, but if you _must_ know, and in the hyptothetical event that it _had_ been one, you did pass. With flying colours even, if reports are to be believed.”

The look on his face softens that small amount, then, and there's even the hint of a quirk at the corner of his mouth that Roxy finds herself mirroring.

"And Eggsy?"

"Increasingly bitter with each passing day that you didn't give it up, but he'll live, unfortunately."

Harrison’s a bit more liberal than most doctors when it comes to voicing out just what he thinks of patients who have made a habit of waltzing into his surgery with the most inane of injuries, but gruffness aside, he’s the good sort. Even more so if you actually listen to him.

“Drink,” he tells her in a tone that bodes no argument and Roxy obediently downs the rest of her water, Harrison starting to work on getting her IV line out.

It should be painfully ironic to dislike needles when she already knows through firsthand experience that there are clearly worse things out there, but as Harrison eases the cannula out, Roxy only grips her glass a little bit tighter, decidedly _not_ thinking about what he’s doing to the back of her hand.

Harrison must have noticed the slight tension though, because the next time he speaks, he’s deliberately talkative, mindless filler that Roxy knows he doesn’t have to contribute.

“If you ask me,” he says blithely, “This whole thing where a sense of endurance is literally beaten into you? I could do without it, really.” There’s a pin-prick sting when the needle leaves her skin and Harrison, bless him, just barrells on right through it without even a pause.

“Did you know that recent studies have shown that you can’t actually acclimatise to torture? Not that Arthur is likely to give a fuck, since the point of the exercise was apparently to gauge the extent of your reactions.”

“Controlled environment, though,” she points out. “Which means it’s already flawed from the get-go.”

“Precisely my fucking point.” Harrison slaps a bandaid onto the exit wound on her hand with feeling, though he’s still careful about it. “It’s all bloody ridiculous–,” he adds to no one in particular, though Roxy suspects that it might, in part, be aimed at certain senior management and their affinity for dramatic exercises, “–but that’s what you get, I suppose, being here.”

Which is actually remarkably true, to some extent. She's been thrown under a subway car and out of a plane believing she had no parachute, for god's sake, so what's a little water at this stage? What's a few bruised ribs and an already-healing cut across her cheek?

Warm and dry for the first time in what feels like far, far too long, it seems like it could have all just been a hallucination, some terrible nightmare that she's finally woken up from, but–

"So what will it be now, Lancelot?"

Harrison has his hands on his hips, watching her hawkishly from the side of her bed.

"Home? You're more than welcome to stay for a while longer here too, if you'd like. Eggsy stayed for a good day and a half, and he tapped out long before you even thought of it."

They must have given her painkillers to take the edge off because the longer she stays awake, the more Roxy can feel the ache echoing in her bones, a dull, sedated reminder of what's to come when the drugs do wear off.

"Home," she says at length, and doesn't even think twice about how she's lying through her teeth.

"I'd like to go home, please."

 

* * *

 

Arthur's apparently scheduled a debriefing session for later in the week and there's a psychiatric check-in that she'll have to show up for too, at some point, but as it stands right now, all of it just feels...surreally distant. Almost unreal, even, like instructions that she'd received in the midst of a fever-dream.

Reality seems to have fallen in on itself while she was inside that room, and if the bruises on her skin hardly feel like they should exist at times, then at least she can half-pretend that the dull, throbbing pain that she’s starting to feel from them isn't actually real either.

The Kingsman cab had taken her from the storefront to Leicester Square at her request, Roxy operating on autopilot the moment she'd gotten out of the car. From street to tube station to platform, she has no idea how she'd managed to navigate around the other midday commuters, let alone get herself onto the Northern line, but as the doors close behind her and the train starts to pull away, it's only then that she really starts to realise where she is, never mind how she got there.

It's disconcertingly bright inside the carriage, fluorescent lights that make her all that more aware of how the shadows under her eyes must look and how the bruises must be showing on her skin.

_It's not what you think_ , she wants to tell the people who cast sympathetic looks at her. _It's actually worse._

In true London fashion though, the stares blessedly never translate into questions and Roxy spends the rest of the trip keeping her eyes on her hands, quietly counting the number of stops left until she has to get off.

Warren Street.

Euston.

Camden Town.

Everything is here, exactly where it should be. And yet, when the usual announcements sound and the doors slide shut again, she can't help but start to question:

How about her?

Is _she_ here, and is this where she’s meant to be?

Reality inside the room had been confined only to pained breaths and shuddering gasps, mouthfuls of blood that she had swallowed, but now, out of it? Roxy doesn’t think she trusts the authenticity of this bright, painfully normal world anymore. The blue upholstery of the Tube train seat may feel real enough to touch, but at the same time, Roxy can’t shake the anticipation of waking up from it all.

Like there’s going to be a point where she’ll startle awake with her hands tied and hair still dripping. As if there will come a moment where a slap across her face will jolt her back.

The sunlight is deceivingly warm on her face when she steps out from the station onto Hampstead High Street, and even if she knows by now that it had been a mistake to not take Harrison up on the offer of staying at the med bay, it’s not like this wouldn’t amount to the same thing, in the long run.

Maybe.

Hopefully.

In any case, it’ll be a waste of her train fare to turn back now, so two lefts it is, one right, and straight up the tree-lined street until she’s at the building at the end of the row.

Roxy punches in the security code for the main door and the buzz that comes with it's unlocking is a sound that's comforting in its familiarity, Roxy dredging up a smile to offer the elderly couple who are just coming down the stairs.

Two flights, then, until she’s at the first door to her right.

Merlin's bed is unmade when she crawls into it and if she has to sleep on his usual side, then really, he should learn not to leave the other stacked with books and half-tinkered guns.

 

* * *

 

There’s late evening light crawling in through the spaces between the blinds when she wakes up, bed covers drawn snugly over her feet and bedroom door left ajar in the wake of Merlin’s slightly pedantic need to make sure she doesn’t wake up with freezing toes.

It’d be almost tooth-rottingly sweet, coming from any other person, but Roxy knows for a fact that the action has been ingrained partly due to sheer self-interest. She has this habit, you see, of kicking the sheets off five minutes after falling asleep, and since it’s resulted in more than one occasion of cold feet pressed against warm calves in the middle of the night, she’s just glad that Merlin is trying to kick the habit for her, rather than kick her out of his bed.

On that note, it’s not like she can find any real fault in his roundabout ways of caring, anyways. It’s understated, the way he works, just offhand enough to feel effortless, and if it’s never as grand as the gestures she’d grown up receiving, that doesn’t mean it’s not a welcome departure.

There aren’t any roses waiting for her at the foot of the bed, but she appreciates her usual brand of shampoo and conditioner waiting for her in the shower anyways, and even if he doesn’t lay out a change of clothes for her on the bathroom counter, it’s only because he knows she’d rather rummage around in his wardrobe for whatever she feels like that day.

Which suddenly brings her to the question:

What exactly _does_ one wear, while recovering from a week spent in hell itself?

With Bogota, she’d pulled on the first thing she saw and sat in front of his sock drawer to cry for a full twenty minutes. After Nagasaki, it’d been the oldest, softest t-shirt she could dig out from the depths of his wardrobe, the rest of the day spent wearing only that and nothing else.

Now, though?

Now, Roxy stands before the neat stacks of clothes with a curious mix of fatigue-relief-unease expanding in her chest, and she has to wonder: has she actually lost her mind sometime over the past two years? Who even _does_ this on a regular basis, and keeps coming back for more?

Roxy sighs and reaches for the stack closest to her right. A sweatshirt kind of day it is, then.

 

* * *

 

She can hear him in the kitchen when she finally pads out of the bedroom, the socks that she’d pulled on as an afterthought making her go quiet over the floorboards.

“Stop that,” he’s saying absently to Leah who’s bumping up incessantly against him, whining as she does. Roman, in turn, is just lying on his rug in the corner, already too old to join in with the cavorting. “Stop that whining, lass, you’re going to–”

“End up waking me?” Roxy suggests. “Because it’s a little too late for that, I’m afraid.”

Watching over something on the stove, Merlin turns just in time to see Leah disentangle herself and bound over to Roxy’s side, yelping in excitement as she does.

“I was about to say ‘going to make me regret not leaving you at the pound’–” he says with mock dryness, “–but that works too. Waking you up was a very close second concern.”

In his old age, it’s taken Roman a while to amble over to her, but the German Shepherd manages to make it anyways, a soft, utterly dignified _wuff_ of welcome that’s rewarded with a scratch behind the ears.

“She’s been good, I hope? Wasn’t too much of a handful?”

And Roxy knows she really shouldn’t, her body already aching from spending hour after miserable hour lying on the ground, but she can’t help it; she eases herself carefully to the floor anyways, letting the dogs clamber happily all over her.

“No worse than usual, even if one of my sofa cushions will never be the same again.”

“Should I reimburse you?”

The look that Merlin gives her is reminiscent of the one that she’d received from Harrison, though in Merlin’s case, there’s a good deal more fondness than exasperation.

“I’m sure I’ll think of something, don’t worry.”

  
  


There's the sound of pots and cutlery being moved, and when she looks up next from where she has Roman resting his head on her lap, Merlin is starting to ladle something into a bowl, Leah clearly taking this as her cue to go bother him again

“ _Leah_ ,” he sighs in disapproval when she starts pawing at him, and watching Merlin try to handle her damned annoyance of a dog, the drowsy weight of Roman’s head on her lap, Roxy feels reality start to settle back into place.

Later, there will be doubts, of course.

Moments in the night when she will wake up with a scream lodged in her throat and her hands fisted in his shirt, the flat of his palm pressed comfortingly against her back until she remembers where she is.

A long, quiet hour close to dawn when he’ll gather her into his arms and murmur something that sounds like _I’m sorry, I’m so sorry_ into her hair, Roxy not yet brave enough to ask what it is, exactly, that he’s apologising for.

But for now, this:

The sound of Roman huffing as he wanders back to his rug, Leah in tow. Merlin’s hand held out to her so that she can pull herself up from the kitchen floor. “I’m okay, really,” said in reply, when the brush of his lips against her temple is an unspoken question.

And this much, at least, is real.

**Author's Note:**

> Some unnecessary backstory: So I actually began this fic early in the year, when I had an _intense_ craving for H/C Roxlin fic and just really wanted to write one or two scenes of soppy domestic comfort. Fast forward a couple of months, that...evidently didn't work out, since this has since mutated into more of a Roxy character-study? 
> 
> Uh.
> 
> Basically what I'm trying to say is: don't leave your stuff lying around for too long, because it'll inevitably become something else and right now, I can feel my May-2015 self feeling very, very disappointed at the outcome, hah ;D I hope it's been enjoyable, though, and that it wasn't all too awful!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [excalibur (Illustration)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4629771) by [theartsypumpkin (Kuroaloeart)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kuroaloeart/pseuds/theartsypumpkin)




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